It demonstrated that the American President was not a king, that all actions have consequences, and that the national government, conceived in hope, with its checks and balances, could maintain itself without waging war, even right after one. And that the national government could struggle to free itself from all vestiges of human oppression. It had not succeeded, but it had worked. The impeachers had reduced the seventeenth President to a shadow—a shadow President; that is, a President who did not cast a long shadow, although his regressive policies would.
